National Voter Guide

Tuesday is election day here in the U.S., and if you haven’t voted early in your area this weekend is the time to decide who you’re going to pull the proverbial lever for.

I found a National Voter Guide that will not only let you get some information on the national races it also has information on local races in most areas. I’d love to be able to drop in a widget to let you start getting info on the races in your locality but it’s in JavaScript and WordPress.com has chosen not to make them one of the chosen few sources that they’ll accept JavaScript from.

You’ll have to follow this link to see which politicians I’m voting for (other than the fact that I refuse to vote for Dianne Wilkerson for the state senate, who not only got caught too many times but also got defeated in the primary but doesn’t have the grace to accept being defeated) although I will weigh in in on the three questions on the ballot in Massachusetts.

1. I’m against the repeal of the state income tax (on economic grounds because with that money gone where will our cities get the money they would have gotten from the state?)
2. I’m for decriminalizing of marijuana (as long as you’re not an asshat while you smoke who am I to say you shouldn’t smoke a little weed?)
3. I’m against the prohibition of dog racing (it reeks of dogs being more important than humans, and the employees in that industry have to make a living somehow; it’s not their fault some people mistreat the dogs so don’t punish them for what they have no control over)

Don’t forget to make up your mind who you’re voting for and find out where your polling place is (it may have moved since the last election). Also don’t forget to set your clocks back one hour before going to bed Saturday night when Daylight Saving Time ends.

Happy Halloween!

Peng and I want to join basement cat in…

There are a ton of events going on in SecondLife today that I’ll have to check out now that Peng showed me how to get on SL from Intrepid. And Gurl 6 has some free hair for the occasion, in addition to the daily special, so get out there and celebrate like it’s 2008! Just don’t take any plastic (or wooden) candy apples.

Ubuntu Intrepid is here!

Canonical has now released Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. For all the good news you can read the news release on the Ubuntu website, as well as the release notes. You can also get a graphical overview of the new features in Intrepid, and of course you can also download a disk image of the final release to check out at your leisure.

Mark Shuttleworth has posted a nice article to his own blog about the design for the new user switcher, although I did notice that it seems to be hooked into Pidgin to show my current IM status. Although not everyone is entirely thrilled with the new Ibex.

Updated 3:55pm: I realized that I had forgotten to include a picture that seems to be very apropos today.

[UPDATED] Nvidia released beta 96 legacy drivers, and we almost have Compiz back

[Updated to reflect Alberto Milone's advise on the matter. Please read the entire post, including what Alberto says, before installing the new driver. -Peng]

When I checked my email this morning I saw that Nvidia has released a beta version of their 96.43.09 legacy drivers. After following the instructions that Takahani posted on the Launchpad bug about it I finally have Nvidia drivers working again.

- Download NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.09-pkg1.run (or the other one if you’re running a 64 bit system) to your home folder (/home/simon/ for me)
- switch to pty1 (CTRL+ALT+F1)
- log in
- sudo service kdm stop (will kill X server) (or gdm if you are running gnome)
- sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.09-pkg1.run
- say yes to everything (will compile nvidia kernel module)
- sudo reboot now (reboot now !!)

And that should be enough, login and check that “glxinfo | grep direct” says “YES”

Sure enough, I ran the grep and this is what I got

And yes, despite the fact that my computer still calls itself Icebox-Hardy, that’s with Ubuntu Intrepid running.

I did find that with Compix enabled I was getting white sections where my Screenlets were running, but I was able to get things fixed by following the instructions in this post on the nV News Forums.

I was able to get Compiz running and even use my desktop cube/sphere, but I changed a setting and it broke. Unfortunately I didn’t check things at each step so I don’t know which setting borked things, but Takahani said there’s an override that I can run to get Compiz working properly again, and as soon as I find ut what it is I’ll post it as an update to this post. In the meantime I’m back to Xcompmgr so I can use AWN. It’s getting so bloody close, but still no cigar.

Do you need the Nvidia 71 legacy driver? Good news: Nvidia release a beta for their 71.86.07 driver that you can give a try.

Updated 3:47pm: Alberto Milone, the developer of Envy, strongly recommends waiting until they come out into the -proposed repo, which should be fairly soon. Woops! I hadn’t seen his advice before I installed the new driver. I guess we’ll see what issues need to be dealt with downstream.

I Can Has Cheezburger?: Recap of The Lol Arts Show

Peng and I love the website I Can Has Cheezburger?. Some artists had a show of lolart in San Francisco recently to raise money for adult literacy. If you love lolcats as much as we do you should check out the video and pictures from the show on the Recap of The Lol Arts Show. You can also check out lolarts.com to find out how you can put on your own lolarts show.

Anyone in the Boston area looking for a party before All Hallow’s Eve?

as of the day the post was written

I got an email yesterday from Mike Rushton (aka leftyfb on the Ubuntu Forums) of the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo (Local Community) Team and they’re having a release party for Ubuntu Intrepid tomorrow (Thursday) evening at the usual location, the Globe Bar & Grill in Copley Square beginning at 7pm. If you’re interested in going you can get all the details on the team wiki.

I’m also seeing that my request for free Ubuntu Intrepid LiveCDs has been approved and has been passed along to the shipper. Unlike the last release I’ll be getting enough disks to pass out, which is good since I’ve already been asked about them. I can’t wait to get my order!

Don’t forget your FREE Codeweaver software today

As I posted yesterday, Codeweavers is giving anyone who wants it a free license for their software for one day only, Tuesday, 28 October. Go to the Codeweavers website and get your serial number, then download your software.

Now for the install. I had some trouble figuring out just what you needed to run to get the software to install, but I found it and I’m sharing it with you all. If you’re running Linux, once you get it downloaded open up a Terminal window, go to the folder where you saved it, and run

sudo -H sh install-crossover-pro-7.1.0.sh

That will install the software for you, then just let it run the install wizard once the installation is finished or you can launch it from the new menu area that you will find under Applications.

The keypad glitch is back in Ubuntu Intrepid

I hate to have to say this, but after I got the distro updates this morning to my Ubuntu Intrepid install I found that I couldn’t use my numeric keypad again. I did a reboot and the keypad was still borked.

As was the case with Ubuntu Hardy to fix it required a simply fix in the keyboard settings (System > Preference > Keyboard > Mouse Keys). Simply clear the checkbox for controlling the cursor with the keypad. The fix will be applied as soon as you clear the checkbox.

It looks like bug #197589: Numeric keypad no longer works after upgrade still needs to be fixed, but it turned out that the GNOME bug I referenced nack in March, #521197 – Numeric keypad no longer works after upgrade isn’t the culprit. Hopefully we can get this resolved once and for all without having to deal with it again next April when the Jaunty Jackelope scampers across the globe.

Peng’s links for Monday, 27 October

• Gerry Ilagan: VirtualBox 2.0.4 now available, support for Ubuntu 8.10 added. I wish I had seen this news before I started the upgrade to Intrepid. I would have checked it in VirtualBox before running the dist-upgrade. Now you have a choice that I didn’t have.
• Christer Edwards: A Better Integrated Forum. Christer has tweaked the Ubuntu Tutorials Forum and you should be able to use any existing site registration or even openID. It’s now even easier to get (and give) assistance with Christer’s tutorials.
• Christer Edwards: Five Tips to Prepare for Release Day! Are you ready for Intrepid’s official release on Thursday? Use Christer’s short list to make sure you are.
• Sayak Banerjee: Ubuntu’s Live USB Disk Creator. Have you ever used a USB drive for a portable Ubuntu installation? Have you ever wanted to? It’s even easier to set up thanks to the new USB start-up disk creator.
• Colin Eatson Watson: Totem BBC plugin. Yesterday I mentioned the BBC plugin for Totem when I was looking at my upgrade to Intrepid. Colin tells us why it came to be, and what they look to do to improve the plugin. And it’s all DRM-free, so you don’t have to worry about onerous licensing restrictions to how you can use the content.

There’s one more link I want to provide, but I wanted to set it apart from the other links a little. Codeweavers Crossover, the popular commercial program that brings Windows compatibility to both Linux and MacOS computers, launched a campaign to get President Bush to “make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.” One of the goals was to get gas prices in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul down to $2.19 a gallon.

Two weeks ago that price was observed at a Twin Cities gas station, and Codeweavers has responded by giving their $40 software package to anyone tomorrow, whether they run Linux or MacOS on their computer.

For all of the details check out the press release and get ready to snag your copy of Codeweavers tomorrow, complete with tech support. If any of the other goals they set for President Bush are met they’ll have another free software giveaway.

Thanks to Mike Rushton of the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo (Local Community) Team for passing along the news in the form of a link to the story on the TUAW website.

I knew I was forgetting a change. Main Menu got updated in Intrepid, too

I knew there was another change in Ubuntu Intrepid I wanted to blog, and it wasn’t until I was checking an Ubuntu Forums question about Google Earth not launching did I remember what it was. The Main Menu applet, the window that lets you modify the main application menus in Ubuntu, also got a very nice change. If you’ve used it at all in the past you know that if you want to delete or modify an existing menu item you had to right click it and select an option from the context menu. Not anymore.

Now there are Properties and Delete buttons right on the right hand side of the window so you won’t have to hunt down how to make changes.